Regarding diarrhetic lecture titles

In my professional capacity as campus calendar editor, I come across some wacky titles for the hundreds of exhibits, roundtables, lectures and other events on campus. With this experience I've become more sensitive to the many pitfalls involved in composing a title, and I have to say that, in spite of the obvious overload of scientific brainpower on this campus, scientists offering public lectures around here are far and away the most slapdash composers of titles for their talks. In support of this contention I submit to you Exhibit A, the title of an upcoming talk by one Nicholas Magnus of Eli Lilly (private sector, no less!). The talk is titled as follows:

"Development of a Mild Beta-Ketonitrile Knorr Reaction to Afford an AMPA Potentiator and Enantioselective Aryl Transfer Process Gives Access to mGlu2 Receptor Potentiators"

I submit that scientists tend to care so little about the efficient communication of their work that, when it comes to deciding on a title for their lecture, they invariably choo0se either, 1) the first sentence of the abstract; 2) the first sentence of the paper; or 3) the last sentence of the paper. Anything along the lines of, you know, reworking and condensing the central point by means of some principles of linguistic efficiency is, apparently, strictly verboten. Scientists have more important matters to attend to than communication.

King for a year

Well! I didn't know that Mardi Gras too was originally a pagan celebration. Did the Christians start any that were not burned up filling the vacuum of another that had been banned? I'm sure the pagan Mardi Gras had moments to rival the sprawling revelry of the Big Easy, but some aspects of their approach, like the one described below by an Internet historian in an episode of something called "History Podcast" by a Mr. Jason Watts, well, let's just say like parts of the party can be a bit of a downer to modern eyes:

"When Mardi Gras was still a pagan festival, the pagans selected a man to be king of Mardi Gras, and his kingship entitled him to have all his wishes fulfilled for a year. When his reign ended, he was literally sacrificed."

That sounds really awful, but alas, as a cultural relativist, I can't pass judgment, ya know, per se, in this specific case. If that entire pagan society appreciated this practice, if even the year's king embraced his fate as a shooting star... Who am I to tell from crazy?

Favorite Factoid No. 17: Read it or weep, Biff...

From favorite shows issue Favorite Factoids... Nerds and jocks, cool kids and dorks, they are supposed to be like oil and water, yet that may just be a pernicious misconception given these facts about reading and other activities mentioned in a recent segment on the PBS NewsHour:

• "Readers are four times more likely to do volunteer and charity work."

That's pretty amazing, but it's still just a bivariate relationship, surely most of that effect is due to some other socio-economic factors? Well, how about this related factoid that includes wealth:

• "The poorest group of Americans who read do twice as much [charity] as the richest Americans who don’t read."

Okay okay, so much for charitable work. Readers win that hands down, that's not all that surprising. But reading is sendentary, readers must not be active? Whatever, Biff, chew on this cud:

• "Readers exercise at twice the rate as non-readers."

...So there it is, folks. Reading is sexy.